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Filmmaker Chris Sanders was visiting DreamWorks Animation to see what was in development, when he came across Peter Brown’s novel “The Wild Robot.“
The first few sentences of Brown’s story inspired Sanders so much so that he anxiously told the studio, “Don’t give this to anybody else.”
“This is the kind of story that I really like. I like stories that have their strengths in fragile places, and that’s what this had,” Sanders says. “It’s a lot about life, and there’s no real heroes or villains in the story. Everybody’s just doing their best to survive.”
“The Wild Robot” tells the story of a robot named Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) that is marooned on an uninhabited island. Over time, Roz learns to adapt to her harsh surroundings, slowly building relationships with the other animals on the island. Catherine O’Hara, Mark Hamill and Pedro Pascal are the others among the voice cast.
The heart of the film is the relationship dynamic between Roz and an orphaned gosling named Brightbill (Kit Connor). Roz raises him and teaches him valuable survival lessons such as flying and swimming before migration season sets in.
Sanders notes that when adapting the story for film, Brown had in mind that kindness could be a survival skill. “We really kept that in mind as we worked on the whole thing,” says Sanders.
That explanation was important to Sanders. “Roz has this unrelenting innocence and fineness. She begins to change the entire culture of the island because the island is about life and death. We were able to put that on screen.”
In bringing Roz to life and lifting her from script to screen, Sanders was determined not to overload the character design face with moving parts. “The only robot I’ve seen in a movie that worked was the Iron Giant, and he had limited movement.” Sanders continues, “We made the determination not to give Roz any sort of animation save for her eyes.”
It would all come from the voice.
Read the screenplay below.